Gabe had never claimed to be father material—or even husband material, for that matter—but to have a woman actively hide his child from him...
A father. That’s what this kept coming back to. He was a father?
His gaze moved back toward Zoey, who was climbing down from her stool again, a piece of paper clutched in one hand. He was looking at her differently this time, scanning her small, round face for signs of his own. His hand moved up to his own chin, rubbing against that familiar cleft under the sandpaper of stubble, and his mind was spinning in a fog of shock.
“Look!” Zoey said, holding up the paper to Harper. “I drew all of us. That’s Mommy, and Mommy, and me and Grandma and Grandpa...and that’s a cricket.”
Harper’s eyes misted and she nodded, then kissed Zoey’s head. “I love it,” she said. “Your snack is in my bag. It’s on the desk in the back room. Why don’t you go get it?”
Zoey skipped off, and Harper looked down at the faint scribbles on the page.
“Mommy and Mommy,” Harper said. “That’s what she calls me and Andrea. I’ve been upgraded to Mommy, recently, but when she tells stories, you have to know which Mommy she’s talking about.”
Gabe watched Zoey go—sturdy little legs and tangled brown waves. His emotions hadn’t caught up to this yet, and so far, she just looked like a kid—not his kid, not someone any closer to him than any other kid was... But when Harper looked at Zoey, he could see love burning deep in those green eyes. She saw something more when she looked at that child...
Gabe scrubbed a hand through his brown curls. “So Andrea knew she was pregnant when she left.”
“Yes.” Harper turned back toward him. “She said that she knew you didn’t want to get married or have kids, and once she realized she was pregnant, she knew that she had to make her choices with a child in mind, too. And she couldn’t keep doing...whatever it was you two were doing. The back and forth. The constant trying. So she came home.”
Home. That was Comfort Creek for Andrea, but this town wasn’t home for him. He’d been determined never to return to this hypocritical town. It had an attractive enough veneer, but he knew what was burbling underneath...and suddenly a thought struck him for the very first time.
“And no one told me.”
“Andrea made me promise to keep the secret,” Harper said.
“And you’re the only one who knew? I’m sure her parents knew I was the father. And her brother would have known, too, I imagine. If they knew, there would have been others—aunts and uncles, close friends, promising to keep that secret.”
Pink rose in Harper’s cheeks. “I told you.”
“She’s four.” He couldn’t mask the edge in his tone. “It’s been five years.”
“She wasn’t my daughter then,” Harper retorted. “And it wasn’t my business.”
Yeah, that’s what everyone in this town said about his grandmother, too. The way she raised her grandson was none of their business. What she did behind closed doors was her personal business, and far be it from them to push into someone else’s privacy. She was old, and he was a handful—they could sympathize with poor Imogen. But never once did they question whether Gabe’s behavioral issues might have arisen because of his crotchety old grandmother.
Gabe had been a little boy who was told how terrible he was on a daily basis. He’d been an adolescent hiding the emotional bruises from his grandmother’s caustic comments. And now most recently, he was the father of a daughter he didn’t even know existed. Not deemed good enough by Andrea and those closest to her. Ironically, that wasn’t very different from his grandmother.
This town had clean streets and cordial smiles, like the one from Chief Morgan, and under it all was the cesspool of secrets. He had a little girl, and Comfort Creek had kept its collective mouth shut. This stupid town hadn’t changed a bit.
“Not your business.” He nodded slowly. “I should have known about her, and long before this.”
Harper nodded and tugged her ginger curls away from her face. “I agree. But I’m telling you now.”
“And if it hadn’t been for that car accident?” he prodded. If Andrea hadn’t died, leaving her daughter...their daughter...in Harper’s care, what then?
Harper shrugged faintly. “What would you have had me do, Gabe? Go behind my best friend’s back and inform you about Zoey? I couldn’t do that. But I was the voice of reason and balance. I encouraged her to tell you, and eventually...I think she would have.”
“When Zoey was a teenager?” he asked.
“I thought you didn’t work with what-ifs?” She looked away.
So, he’d hit a nerve, had he? Good—she deserved to squirm a little bit. This whole town did! His emotions were kicking in now, and it wasn’t the appropriate emotional response...not what people expected to see when a man discovered he had a child. He wasn’t overflowing with love. He wasn’t feeling tender and paternal.
“This town.” His voice trembled with barely restrained anger. “Everyone keeps their secrets, don’t they? They close the circle and claim to be so innocent. But what happens when they close the circle and you’re the one on the outside? Huh? I was raised in Comfort Creek since my mother dumped me with my grandmother shortly after my birth. Chief Morgan just gave me a very touching speech saying that I’m one of your own. But this town didn’t take care of me. And one day, it might not take care of you, either.”
“So you wanted to know.” Harper shook her head. “Andrea didn’t think you would! If you had any kind of flexibility, maybe you should have let Andrea know that, because I’m not taking responsibility for—”
Zoey appeared in the doorway, and as Gabe’s gaze landed on the girl, the words died in Harper’s mouth.
“We shouldn’t discuss any of this in front of her,” Harper said, her voice tight.
“Yeah. Agreed.” Even he could see that their old, festering issues would be poison for that little girl.
Zoey stared at them, gray eyes wide. Did Zoey have any sense of who he was? When he was a boy, he used to imagine that his dad would come back for him. His mom was a lost cause, but he’d held out hope for a dad. He’d figured that he’d know his dad right away—some sort of innate feeling, or something. But that had only been a childhood fantasy. In reality, it was possible to look your own child in the face and have no idea who she was.
“Zoey, it’s okay, sweetheart,” Harper said, her tone softening. “Come here. We’re done talking about that anyway.”
“Are you fighting like with Aunt Heidi?” Zoey asked doubtfully.
“Yes.” Shame clouded her expression. “Something like that. But we won’t anymore.”
Gabe had to get out of here. He needed space to process all of this, and he didn’t trust himself to do it in front of Zoey.
“I’m going to head out.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”
It was too casual of a statement to encompass it all, but he didn’t know how to deal with this—and his anger wasn’t going to be of use right now. He needed space.
Before Harper could say anything, he marched to the door and pulled it open. Outside that door was freedom, but something tugged his gaze back over his shoulder once more to the curly redhead who stared at him with regret swimming in her eyes and the dark-haired child next to her, an apple slice held aloft.
He’d promised himself that he’d never come back to this town for good reason, but that was before he’d